A court in Paris on Thursday found Nicolas Sarkozy, former president of France, guilty of a criminal conspiracy to finance his 2007 campaign with funds from the government of the onetime Libyan strongman Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi.
But Mr. Sarkozy, a conservative politician who led France from 2007 to 2012, was acquitted by the court on charges of corruption and illegal campaign financing.
The conviction was not the first for Mr. Sarkozy, who since leaving office has already been found guilty of corruption, influence peddling and campaign spending violations in separate cases. He has also been stripped of France’s highest distinction, the Legion of Honor.
But the ruling on Thursday was perhaps the most severe and most damaging blow to Mr. Sarkozy’s legacy, with the court finding that he was guilty of scheming to reach the most powerful office in France by seeking money from an autocratic government.
Nathalie Gavarino, the presiding judge, said as she read out the court’s ruling that Mr. Sarkozy had allowed top aides who worked under his authority and “acted in his name” to “obtain or try to obtain” funding from Libya.
Mr. Sarkozy was cleared on other charges — illegal campaign financing; concealing the misappropriation of public funds; and passive corruption, which applies to people suspected of receiving money or favors — suggesting that the court was not convinced by the prosecution’s argument that such funding had actually materialized.
Mr. Sarkozy, now 70, no longer holds any public office, but he is a well-regarded figure on the right who retains some political influence. At the three-month trial, he repeatedly denied any wrongdoing.
The trial presented no evidence of a deal struck directly between Mr. Sarkozy and Colonel el-Qaddafi, who was toppled and killed during an uprising in 2011.
But prosecutors had accused the former French leader of being a central figure in a “corruption pact” with Libyan officials to funnel money to his 2007 campaign through a murky mix of bank and cash transfers, offshore accounts, and sham transactions.
Prosecutors said that the scheme violated France’s election rules, which prohibit funding from a foreign state and have a strict spending cap for presidential campaigns. In return, prosecutors said, Libya wanted economic deals, diplomatic recognition and possibly assistance from France in rescinding an arrest warrant against a top Libyan official who was wanted for the bombing of a French airliner in 1989 that killed 171 people.
Top aides to Mr. Sarkozy made several trips to Libya from 2005 to 2007, when he was interior minister — a time when the Qaddafi government was trying to shed its pariah status.
Mr. Sarkozy visited Libya himself shortly after he was elected, then welcomed Colonel el-Qaddafi for a widely criticized state visit, during which the Libyan strongman memorably pitched his Bedouin-style tent in a Paris garden.
The verdict capped a sprawling and convoluted case that stretched over a decade with several twists and turns — including, just days before the decision, the death of Ziad Takieddine, a French Lebanese businessman who said he had personally delivered millions in cash for Mr. Sarkozy’s campaign and who was one of the defendants at the trial despite having fled France for Lebanon.
In 2023, Mr. Sarkozy was placed under formal investigation on charges of benefiting from witness tampering after accusations that his allies had pressured Mr. Takieddine to retract his claims.
Mr. Sarkozy had strenuously denied any corruption pact, arguing that the accusations were driven mostly by allies of Colonel el-Qaddafi seeking revenge. Under Mr. Sarkozy’s leadership, France played a prominent role in the NATO-led campaign of airstrikes that ultimately led to the toppling of Colonel el-Qaddafi and his death at the hands of Libyan rebels.
Mr. Sarkozy’s legal team also noted that the investigation, which started in 2013, had found little trace of Libyan funds in Mr. Sarkozy’s campaign and no conclusive evidence that Libya had sent millions, as some former Libyan officials had claimed.
Under French law, though, prosecutors do not have to prove that a corrupt deal was fully carried out to secure a conspiracy conviction — only that a deal was agreed upon.
Since 1945, only one other former French head of state has been found guilty by a court of law: Jacques Chirac, who was convicted in 2011 of misusing public funds when he was mayor of Paris. Mr. Chirac was given a suspended sentence.
Since Mr. Sarkozy left office, some of the legal cases against him have been dropped, but others have led to convictions.
In 2021, he was found guilty of trying to obtain information from a judge about a court case against him. That ruling was upheld on appeal last year, and he was sentenced to one year under a form of house arrest with an electronic bracelet.
Mr. Sarkozy wore that bracelet for several months but was able to remove it this year after he turned 70 — which, under French law, allows convicts to request conditional parole.
He was also convicted in 2021 on charges of illegally financing his unsuccessful 2012 re-election campaign, which wildly exceeded France’s spending limits. That case is still going through the appeals process.
Aurelien Breeden is a reporter for The Times in Paris, covering news from France.
The post Sarkozy Guilty of Conspiracy to Seek Libyan Money for 2007 Campaign appeared first on New York Times.
